8:30 p.m. Doors open with a private viewing of John Chamberlain Choices
10 p.m. Performance begins

$22 current Guggenheim members / $27 individual non-members

Nika Danilova, the woman behind Zola Jesus, brings her epic, iconoclastic sound —full of dark evocative beauty, to the rotunda, performing a first time collaboration between Nika and esteemed composer J.G. Thirlwell. Thirlwell has arranged original compositions penned by Danilova to be performed with the Mivos string quartet. Zola Jesus’ classically trained voice is commanding, rich and silky and her music draws from industrial, classical, electronic, and experimental rock influences. From thumping ballads to electronic glitch, no sound goes unexplored. Building on the success of her highly acclaimed 2011 album Conatus (Sacred Bone), she has recently collaborated with David Lynch, M83, and Orbital. Zola Jesus’ live performances have been called ”near perfect rainy day music” and onstage she has been described as ”the physical depiction of a dove, of delicate deliverance paired with the strength of determination and purpose fixated in her sound.” JG Thirlwell has worked with Nick Cave, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Bang On a Can, Sonic Youth, Nine Inch Nails, and Kronos Quartet, among others.

The three-part series of live music that accompanies John Chamberlain: Choices, on view through May 13 at the Guggenheim Museum, Divine Ricochet takes its thematic cue from the poetic fusion, chaotic riffing, explosive color and sublime assemblage that characterized Chamberlain’s work.

The series title is borrowed from a 1991 work by the late American sculptor. A lover of music, Chamberlain pushed boundaries as he explored abstraction, rhythm, harmony, and dissonance, providing a vibrant context for contemporary musical experiments in the museum’s rotunda. Like Chamberlain’s work, the music of Grouper, Julianna Barwick, Cold Cave, and Zola Jesus exemplify the intense push and pull between power and delicacy, structure and abstraction.